Shouldn't sequence A036788 be keyworded "fini"?

[Maximilian Hasler]

IMHO this (& related) is another sequence which is ill defined unless
it includes in the definition the explicit reference to a (stable)
document giving in an unambiguous way the conventions that are
(arbitrarily (!)) chosen to be used for roman numeration. (e.g. D or
"I)" ? M or "(|)" ?)

Maximilian

On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 20:55, Andrew Weimholt <andrew at weimholt.com> wrote:
> On 7/2/08, Jonathan Post <jvospost3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Shouldn't sequence A036788 be keyworded "fini" for "finite"?
>>
>>  A036788  Length of Roman notation for n <= length of decimal representation.
> [...]
>>  Alternatively, the parentheses can be nested so ( I )  is
>>  1,000 and  ( ( I ) ) is 1,000,000. The numbers can get a bit unwieldy
>>  as they get bigger.
>
> Adding two characters,  "(" and ")", for each 1000, is still shorter
> than writing
> three characters, "000", so the sequence would be infinite if you allow for
> arbitrarily deep nesting of parenthesis.
>
> for example...
>   ( I ) is shorter than 1000 by 1 character
>   (( I )) is shorter than 1000000 by 2 characters
>   ((( I ))) is shorter than 1000000000 by 3 characters
>  ...
>  The similar expansion for 10^(3n) is shorter than the decimal
> representation by n charcters.
>
> Andrew
>